Definition of "gentlefolk"

We ſay that Shores wife hath a prety foote, / A cherry lippe, a bonny eie, a paſſing pleaſing tongue: / And that the Queenes kindred are made gentlefolks.

c. 1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Valentine Sims [and Peter Short] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1597, [Act I, scene i]

Well, Gentlefolk, I dare now wage a Crown, / You take me for the verieſt Romp in Town,— / But ere I part from ye, I'll let you ſee, / There's other Molly Buxomes beſides me; [...]

1729, [Thomas] d’Urfey, “[The Comical History of Don Quixote. With the Marriage of Mary the Buxome. Part III.] Epilogue, by Mary the Buxome”, in The Comical History of Don Quixote. […], London: Printed for J[ohn] Darby, […], A[rthur] Bettesworth […], and F[rancis] Clay […], all in trust for Richard, James, and Bethel Wellington, page 211

What do gentlefolks come to an inn for, if it is not for entertainment and accommodation?

1808 October 1, “Mrs. Bell’s Petition”, in The Satirist, or Monthly Meteor, volume III, London: Printed for Samuel Tipper, […]; T. Gillet, printer, […], page 286

What was it to her what gentlefolks ate or drank, provided they paid for it honestly? There were many honest gentlemen, whose stomachs could not abide bacon, grease, or dripping, especially on a Friday; and what was that to her, or any one in her line, so gentlefolks paid honestly for the trouble?

1822, [Walter Scott], chapter IX, in Peveril of the Peak. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., page 223

If there be any evil in novels at all, it is when they take people from their business—when they occupy a mother's time to the neglect of her children—when they lead idle boys to neglect their lessons, and when they lead idle gentlefolks to fancy themselves employed, when they are only killing time.

1827 August 18, W. P. S., “The Common-place Book. No. XIX. Novel Writers and Novel Readers.”, in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, volume X, number 269, London: Printed and published by J[ohn] Limbird, […], pages 118–119

I love to hear thy earnest voice wherever thou art hid, / Thou testy little dogmatist, thou pretty Katydid! / Thou mindest me of gentlefolks, old gentlefolks are they— / Thou say'st an undisputed thing, in such a solemn way.

1839 November 16, [Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.], “The Question Asked”, in Supplement to the Connecticut Courant, volume V, number 46, Hartford, Conn.: John L. Boswell, publisher, page 361, column 1

"Ah!" she said, with a little cry of disappointment, "my man said not to make too sure, and that the ways of the gentlefolks is hard to know."

1885 January, [Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant], “The Portrait. A Story of the Seen and the Unseen.”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CXXXVII, number DCCCXXXI, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood & Sons, […], page 13, column 1

We've been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble's time—to the days of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all.

1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter III, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], phase the first (The Maiden), page 32

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician and the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.

1908–1910, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, “Leonard and Jacky”, in Howards End, New York, N.Y., London: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons […], published 1910, page 53

This gift, which had been accompanied by a few kind words, had gone to Bunting's heart. It had confirmed him in his Conservative principles; only gentlefolk ever behaved in that way; quiet, old-fashioned, respectable gentlefolk, the sort of people of whom those nasty Radicals knew nothing and care less!

1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter XXI, in The Lodger, London: Methuen; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], page 240

The twelfth century was the fist medieval century to know the sorry plight of distressed gentlefolk. Western society had, by then, discovered standards of display which the man of blood had to live up to, or fall in dignity.

2002, David Crouch, “The Household Knight”, in William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219, 2nd edition, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2014, page 29